Game Over
by pixileanin
Summary: James Sirius Potter treats Life like a game. Will he win, or will he lose everything? Written for Courtneyd's Uncomfortable Challenge, VioletBlade's Five Elements Challenge, and the Every Word Counts Challenge. This will be a series of six chapters with exactly 500 words each. Wish me luck, and leave a note to tell me how I'm doing! Happy Reading!
1. Chapter 1

James Sirius Potter's coffee was black as a burnt-out cauldron. He barely functioned at this ungodly hour, in last night's clothes and with no shower.

A woman in the next booth shoved something into her mouth and washed it down with a grimace. Vitamin, he assumed. She'd grab her Muggle briefcase and trudge off to some respectable job, and then he'd slip into the men's room unnoticed, and follow the instructions that the note had laid out.

His profession only had one rule: don't get caught. But last night, they'd knocked him out cold and taken everything in his flat, including his wand.

He stared at the pill in his hand. "Go on, take it," his brain urged, "and no one has to know how badly you screwed up this time."

Fed up with waiting, he walked past the woman into the restroom and examined the pill in the light. The translucent capsule was supposed to mask the flavor of the potion inside. He could smell it: must, with a hint of shellfish.

James swallowed it whole and forced it to stay down.

The transformation took. He checked his disguise in the mirror. It looked good, but it didn't change his rumpled shirt. He smoothed down his hair and pulled his belt tighter. When the change was complete, something bounced on the floor. His wand! He picked it up, feeling for resonance. No, not his. But any wand was better than no wand.

The woman in the booth lifted her head as he passed her again. The note. He should have known that five years was too long to go unnoticed in this game. At the end of each deed, he'd turned down the proffered exit strategy. Acquisition and redistribution was simply too much fun. But that last job must have ended up pissing off someone else in the process.

A deep pocketed, influential someone who broke into his magically secure flat and took all his stuff while he slept, apparently.

James stepped behind the cafe and Disapparated with a crack.

He'd never been to the British Museum of Natural History, not in broad daylight, ushered past security and asking for a ticket, please. No one paid attention as he wandered through the prehistoric bones. People seemed to vanish into other exhibits, conveniently leaving him alone to work his special magic.

A shrill voice rang out and he turned to see the woman from the cafe running towards him. "Riddiculus!" she shouted, aiming her wand at him.

When the spell fizzled into nothing, she sheepishly lowered her wand. "Matt? Is that really you?"

Dragon Dung! James thought furiously. He'd just blown his chance to get his life back. He crumpled the note in his fist. They'd skin him alive. Or worse.

Before he could think about digging for his spare wand, the woman stuck hers up his nose and pressed in, hard. James smelled finely polished oak, a hint of cinnamon and a set up.

"You're not Matt, are you?"


	2. Chapter 2

He was a deadringer for the man everyone else thought had gone rogue.

Except it wasn't him.

Even with Dann's wand stuck up his nose, he didn't look at her. His eyes darted around from the ticket counter to the prehistoric tiger display case, everywhere except at her.

This wasn't the Matt that she knew.

"What have you done with Matt?" she demanded. If this wasn't him, then someone was using magic to create a likeness of him. They'd kept a picture, or a piece of him to transform... her blood ran cold.

"Is there anything left of him besides his hair, or a fingernail, or..." she stifled a sob. Regardless of what he had or hadn't done, she wanted Matt back whole and alive. And if she broke down in the middle of the Natural History Museum, in a building full of Muggles, the first lead she'd gotten on her partner's disappearance would slip away. She couldn't let that happen.

His breath smelled like clams. The skin around his cheekbones was starting to discolor. All clear signs of Polyjuice Potion. There was only one way a spell like this could work.

Somewhere, Matt was still alive.

Dann pushed her wand further up his nose and forced him backwards across the atrium. They ducked down an empty hallway just before a crowd of tourists entered the main exhibit area.

There was a restroom sign, one of those single-room, any-gender signs. Perfect. She hauled them both through the door and flicked the lock. "Tell me where he is," she demanded. "Or you're a dead man." She couldn't help it. She sounded too desperate, but what else was she supposed to do? She couldn't lose her partner a second time.

The man in front of her blinked a few times, and then he began to laugh, a trickle of blood running down where her wand still jabbed his nose. "I'm dead anyway," he said, still laughing.

She didn't see what was so funny.

"You interrupted my heist. That was the only way I was going to get out of this alive. I don't know this Matt. They left me a note and a pill and told me if I got caught, I was dead. That's all I know, I swear."

She was so stunned that she forgot to react when he removed her wand from her hand in a single motion. Suddenly, her bloody wand was pointed back on her.

"You know what?" the man said, like it was just a casual conversation that any man and woman locked in a public restroom would have together, "Now that I've been interrupted, you're likely dead as well. So why don't you tell me who the hell I'm supposed to be, and why this Matt fellow," he gestured at himself with his free hand, "is the perfect person to steal the Basilisk Tooth from that case out there, because maybe that's the only chance either of us have of getting out of this alive."


	3. Chapter 3

James' head passed dangerously close to one of the spotlight bulbs. He swore under his breath and shot a dark glare at the woman below him who now held his life in her hands.

Giving his wand back would have been too easy. _Her_ solution was to _help_.

James floated inches above the Tyrannosaurus Rex skeleton and across the main atrium. As he cleared the skull without mishap, the display case came into view, along with the bored security guard. The plan, if he could call it that, was to sneak down from above, grab the tooth and disappear.

All he had to do now was pray to Merlin that she was as good at levitation as she claimed.

And hope the security guard didn't look up.

James' feet touched the ground. As if on cue, Dann's French heels clicked across the atrium. He did a double-take. She hadn't been wearing a short skirt and heels three minutes ago.

The security guard stepped towards her, and James busied himself with the display case. Even without his wand, this was the easy part.

He was stealing magical items out of Muggle hands. If his dad hadn't been Head Auror, he'd never have known that the Ministry of Magic had taken notice of the thefts. And 'stealing' was such a strong word. Magical items belonged in the hands of wizards. Why did the Ministry even care?

"Where's the restroom?" Dann asked sweetly.

She giggled, and the guard laughed along with her. James glanced up and for a second, their eyes locked. That was a mistake.

"What are you looking at?" the guard asked, turning around. Then he collapsed.

Dann's wand was pointed at his head. "Hurry. That Stunner will only last a few minutes."

James got to work, glad that she was a competent witch. Once he'd gotten the Basilisk tooth, he'd planned on striking a deal with her. She seemed intent on surviving this. It could work... in more ways than one.

The old relic looked similar to the other Saber teeth on display, but the dried yellowish sap was a dead giveaway. He Transfigured an old pencil into an exact replica and traded it for the real thing. No Muggle would know the difference.

As soon as he touched the tooth, a hum shot through his arm. James swore under his breath again. Someone had put a Traceable Charm on it.

They hadn't asked him to steal from Muggles. He was stealing from wizards!

James looked frantically around for a quick exit. "We've got to get out of here!"

Dann took three steps back and blinked out of existence.

"Dann!" James ran up to where she'd disappeared, and then felt himself falling.

He landed in a pile of dust, the Basilisk tooth clattering at his side. Dann was huddled in a corner next to a stack of shipping crates, pointing to the form rising out of the shadows.

The man standing before them looked exactly like him. Exactly like Matt.


	4. Chapter 4

They must have fallen into some kind of basement storeroom. Matt stepped around a mountain of crates and sneered angrily at Dann. He raised his wand, and James waited for her to defend herself. When he saw the horror in her eyes, he grabbed the Basilisk Tooth and leapt to his feet.

"Oi! Over here!"

Matt's head swiveled around. The red glow from his wand pointed straight at James.

Red meant dead, his father had drilled into him. James threw the relic straight at Matt's heart. He wasn't going to die here. This was not how it was going to end.

The Basilisk Tooth hit Matt straight in the chest. He stumbled back and fixed James with a piercing stare. Then he reached up and peeled his face off from the neck up, as if he was taking off a mask.

Suddenly, James was staring into the green, judgmental eyes of his father.

"D-dad?" James stuttered. "What are you..."

Then his world tilted. He'd just stabbed his father through the heart with a poisoned weapon that leaves its victims dead within minutes. James fell to his knees in despair.

His father stumbled forward. "I thought you were my son," he rasped through his spittle. "I thought you would make me proud one day, but you've turned into... this!"

Motionless, James stared at the Basilisk Tooth horrifically stuck in his father's chest. In the middle of Muggle England, there was no antidote to Basilisk Venom. Not any that he could get in three minutes.

He looked pleadingly into his father's eyes. "I was going to quit," he said. "I was going to turn my life around after this, I swear. I'm sorry I let you down! I'm sorry I..."

His father had dropped to his knees too, hatred rising off of him like a heat wave.

And then Dann spoke. "You're James Potter?"

Who else would he be? The rest of his family was well-known for their respective positions. And here, his father, the great Head Auror, Harry Potter, was dying in front of him.

Dann's voice grew incredulous. "You're the Silent Thief! The one we've been tracking for ages!"

James wept openly. He didn't care anymore that she knew, that anyone knew, because his life was truly over. He watched his father's eyes slide shut, and he wanted more than anything to cradle his father's body in his arms and beg for forgiveness. But when he made a move, his father's eyes shot back open, the hatred burning just as strong.

And then it hit him. His father hadn't reacted to Dann's revelation about his secret identity. All the blood should have him lying on his back by now. What was going on?

He looked at Dann, still shell-shocked over the whole exchange. "I thought he was Matt," she said weakly. "When he looked at you, he changed."

_He changed_!

Dann tossed the spare wand to him, and they both aimed at the dying man in front of them.

"Riddikulus!"


End file.
